Pope Francis waves from his pope-mobile at the end of his weekly general audience, in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2014. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Pope Francis waves from his pope-mobile at the end of his weekly general audience, in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2014. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

Photo: Andrew Medichini, Associated Press

Image 2 of 4

Rabbi Abraham Skorka, left, and Cardinal Kurt Koch smile as they arrive at a public conference on the dialogue between Jews and Catholics at the Gregoriana University in Rome, Thursday, Jan 16, 2014. When Pope Francis was Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, archbishop of Buenos Aires, he and Skorka co-wrote a book of dialogues on Judaism and Roman Catholicism, titled "On Heaven and Earth". (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino) less

Rabbi Abraham Skorka, left, and Cardinal Kurt Koch smile as they arrive at a public conference on the dialogue between Jews and Catholics at the Gregoriana University in Rome, Thursday, Jan 16, 2014. When Pope ... more

The Vatican is gearing up for a bruising showdown over the global priest sex abuse scandal, forced for the first time to defend itself at length and in public against allegations that it enabled the rape of thousands of children by protecting pedophile priests and its own reputation at the expense of victims.

The Holy See on Thursday will be grilled by a U.N. committee in Geneva on its implementation of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. Among other things, the treaty calls for signatories to take all appropriate measures to protect children from harm and to put children's interests above all else.

Elementary school in Oakland opens time capsule from 1927San Francisco Chronicle

Brides of March walk through San FranciscoSan Francisco Chronicle

WildCare rescues Western scrub jay from rodent glue trapWildCare

The Regulars: The CarpenterJessica Christian

Massive fire in San Francisco's North BeachDavid Essling

The Holy See ratified the convention in 1990 and submitted a first implementation report in 1994. But it didn't provide progress reports for nearly a decade, and submitted one in 2012 only after coming under criticism following the 2010 explosion of child sex abuse cases in Europe and beyond.

Victims groups and human rights organizations teamed up to press the U.N. committee to challenge the Holy See on its abuse record, providing written testimony from victims and evidence outlining the global scale of the problem. Their reports cite case studies in Mexico and Britain, grand jury investigations in the U.S., and government fact-finding inquiries from Canada to Ireland to Australia that detail how the Vatican's policies, its culture of secrecy and fear of scandal contributed to the problem.

Their submissions reference Vatican documents that show its officials knew about a notorious Mexican molester decades before taking action. They cite correspondence from a Vatican cardinal praising a French bishop's decision to protect his abusive priest, and another Vatican directive to Irish bishops to strike any mandatory reporting of abusers to police from their policies. The submissions even quote the former Vatican No. 2 as saying bishops shouldn't be expected to turn their priests in.

This is the first U.N. hearing dedicated to the issue and the Vatican was compelled to submit to it as a signatory to the convention.